


The Loser (Has to Fall)

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kneeling, Kneeling verse, M/M, Non-Sexual Submission, Pittsburgh Penguins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 02:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2292887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Game 6 against the Rangers, Mario speaks to Sidney in the Penguins locker room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loser (Has to Fall)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in a mild AU where it's normal for younger players to kneel to veterans, but everything else is as accurate as I could make it.

“The winner takes it all.  
The loser has to fall.  
It’s simple, and it’s plain.  
Why should I complain?”—The Winner Takes It All, Abba

The Loser (Has to Fall) 

As soon as the last reporter departed Madison Square Garden’s away locker room, Mario expected silence to fill the air that was now only being breathed by him and Sidney, but, instead everything sounded too loud. The door slammed shut behind the final journalist to leave bearing a notepad heavy with weighty questions and a recorder hollow with the empty answers that always abounded in a defeated locker room after a second consecutive playoff loss. 

Scratching the back of his neck, Mario thought that he could still hear those shattered responses from the besieged Penguins echoing from the tiles. With a trace of wry humor, he observed inwardly that if walls did have lips, perhaps they could speak words of challenge and comfort to Pittsburg’s rapidly unraveling captain, but, since they couldn’t, that duty would fall to Mario, just as he had assumed responsibility for steadying Flower after the debacle that had been Game Four against Blue Jackets. Just as Flower wasn’t a sieve, Sidney wasn’t a goon. The difficulty was convincing them to remember and believe that during the playoffs. 

“Sid,” said Mario, channeling all the affection he felt for the young man whose explosive skill and passion reminded him so much of himself into his tone, as he settled into a vacant stall. 

Folded in on himself like a piece of origami in a corner where the gnats referred to as reporters had been pestering him for soundbites to a thousand unanswerable questions, Sidney lifted his gaze to meet Mario’s. The wide, wild but somehow tamed, dark eyes reminded Mario of a deer catching a first glance of a hiker in the woods. Either the deer would conclude when the hiker rustled the detritus littering the forest floor that it was being hunted and bolt, or else the creature would be soothed by a lack of movement from the hiker and dare to nibble the foliage on a tree near the stranger. 

Not wanting Sidney to feel like prey and retreat inside himself because he couldn’t flee as a deer could, Mario continued softly, pointing at the floor before him, “Come here. Kneel for me.” 

“No.” His chin sagging against his chest, Sidney pressed his spine so closely against the wall that Mario feared the flesh might meld with the architecture. “I don’t want to do that now.” 

“It’s not about what you want.” Mario shook his head. “It’s about what you need.” 

“Don’t tell me what I need.” Sidney’s nostrils flared. “I can figure that out for myself.” 

Arching an eyebrow, Mario determined that if Sidney was strong enough to be defiant, he would be met with the sharpness and sternness to make him submit to the only ritual that could bring him the concentration and control he required to lead his team to victory in Game Seven. 

“If you were watching yourself fall apart tonight, you would know that you need this.” Mario let an incisive edge cut into his voice as he jabbed a finger at the floor before him. “Now come kneel for me. That’s an order, not a request.” 

“I’m not a rookie anymore.” Sidney’s jaw clenched like a fist eager to punch an opponent in a barroom brawl. “You can’t force me to kneel for you.” 

Pinching the ridge of his nose, Mario hesitated, because he realized that he would have to tread carefully over this treacherous ground. Nobody was made to kneel, since the custom was rooted in willing submission, not forced humiliation. “Even as a rookie, you were never forced by me to kneel, and I trust that you remember that,” he replied at last. 

When Sidney offered a slight nod of concession, Mario continued, crisp and tart as a Granny Smith, “As a rookie, you were smart enough to know that you needed to kneel for me. Is the current you really so much stupider than the rookie you that you don’t notice when you need to kneel even when I point it out to you?” 

Biting his lower lip, Sidney considered this, and, regarding contemplation as progress, Mario didn’t press him for a response. 

“No,” mumbled Sidney a moment later, his cheeks flushing red as lobsters. The veins in his neck straining so much that Mario could see them sticking out like coiled wires, Sidney crossed over to the stall Mario was occupying and sank, as awkwardly as the Titanic, to the floor. 

Well-aware that, even under the most ideal circumstances, Sidney wasn’t exactly a touchy-feely person, Mario rested his palms lightly over the younger man’s shoulders. This approach had worked for them in the past, because if Sidney couldn’t tolerate being touched at all, he could extract himself from Mario’s grasp without either party feeling rude or uncomfortable, but, if Sidney was more amenable to human contact, Mario could gradually slide into more intimate gestures of affection. 

As he almost always did when Mario first reached for him, Sidney stiffened in what might have been his instinctual response to any physical contact, but he didn’t twist out of Mario’s grip. After a few tense seconds, his body seemed to decide that it did, indeed, recognize Mario, and, as such, could accept his touch. 

Once he felt Sidney’s muscles begin to unknot under his hands, Mario started to rub Sidney’s shoulders. As he massaged the tension out of Sidney’s shoulders, Mario murmured, “There you go. Was kneeling for me really that hard?” 

“Do you want the truth?” asked Sidney, tilting his head like an inquisitive Cocker Spaniel puppy. 

“Of course.” Mario inched his right palm over to gingerly squeeze the tautness out of the back of Sidney’s neck. “I always want the truth from you, Sid.” 

“Then, yes, it was.” Burying his face in the heels of his hands, Sidney muttered, “It’s fucking embarrassing to kneel when you’re the captain of an NHL team. I admit it, all right?” 

“This isn’t meant to be embarrassing.” Mario removed his left hand from Sidney’s shoulder and carded the fingers through Sidney’s hair, which was still damp from a post-game shower. “I’d never try to humiliate you.” 

“I know.” Sidney sighed. “Anyway, you wouldn’t need to, since I did a good enough job of that myself tonight, fighting and getting frustrated. I’m sorry I’m such a screw-up.” 

“Look at me.” Mario tapped Sidney’s temples, and, when Sidney lifted his face to meet Mario’s eyes, he chided, “You’re not a screw-up, and I don’t ever want to hear you refer to yourself as one ever again.” 

“A disappointment then.” Sidney’s lips thinned. “I apologize for being a disappointment.” 

“You aren’t a disappointment, either.” Mario cupped Sidney’s chin in the palm of his hand and went on, aiming to be firm but not unsympathetic, “Yes, you can be better and you need to be better if we’re going to win this series, but that doesn’t make you a disappointment. You’re the most talented player of your generation, so don’t take dumb penalties. The Rangers are scared of the damage you can do. That’s why they goad you with high-sticks and cross-checks. You have to ignore them and let the scoreboard do the fighting for you, instead of using your fists like some goon. The Rangers want you in the penalty box, so that should be the last place you wish to end up in Game Seven.” 

“The Rangers aren’t just provoking me.” Sidney’s fingers wove an anxious pattern through the air. “They’re also taking away my space and Geno’s. When they do that, we can’t create offensive opportunities, so we can’t let the scoreboard do the talking for us. The Rangers are getting away with tons of interference, so we have to do something to make them stop, or else we’ll definitely lose the series.” 

“I promise that you and Geno will have bodyguards to protect you in the playoffs next year.” Patting Sidney’s cheek, Mario internally called Ray Shero ten kinds of idiot for leaving Pittsburg’s pair of superstars to fend for themselves in so many playoff series. It was borderline criminal negligence, and he regretted not intervening before this latest catastrophe against the Rangers. “For now, though, we can’t have you fighting. You’re the captain, and this team copies whatever you do. When you get rattled and use your fists when you shouldn’t, everyone loses their discipline, and a rout might very well be the result. Believe me, it’s lucky that the scoreboard didn’t read much worse than it did by the end of regulation.” 

“I know.” The black holes in Sidney’s eyes made it clear that he did know, and this knowledge drained him to the bone marrow. “I should’ve handled things differently—better. I just lost my temper, especially because I couldn’t help but wondering—“ 

“Wondering what, Sid?” pressed Mario when Sidney trailed off and showed no signs of elaborating on this final idea.

“If everybody is right when they say I’m a complete payoff dud,” Sidney finished in barely more than a whisper. 

“I remember when everyone was convinced that Steve Yzerman was a playoff failure, and then he led the Red Wings to three Stanley Cups. A similar thing happened with Scott Stevens and the Devils.” Mario smiled and ruffled Sidney’s hair. “The theme here is not to judge a career until it’s over, and don’t write a legacy until it’s done. Healthy and young as you are, you should have plenty more seasons in which to compete for the Cup.” 

“Right.” Sidney exhaled gustily. “It’s just when I won my first Stanley Cup, and I didn’t think that it would take this long for me to get back to the Finals. Maybe I was too young and naive to truly appreciate what happened when we won, but we’ve had so many early playoff exits since then that it’s hard not to ask myself if everything that’s occurred after that Cup win hasn’t all been wasted time. That’s a shitty feeling to have about most of your hockey career.” 

There were numerous awards—starting with the Art Ross and the Rocket Richard—that Mario could have pointed to without much disruption of brain tissue to assure Sidney that fears about his prime years being wasted were completely ungrounded, but, ultimately, hockey was a team sport, so individual accolades could never stack up to the utter euphoria of being a Stanley Cup Champion. That really was what Sidney was expressing, so to try to argue otherwise was to strike at the very foundations of hockey. 

“It hasn’t been wasted time, and you can’t talk about wasted time when you’re so young that you can only grow a caterpillar as a playoff beard.” Mario pointed a finger at the mustache that darkened Sidney’s skin above his upper lip. “Only when your playoff beard is filled with more salt than pepper can you begin to complain about how old you are. Got it?” 

“Yeah.” Sidney’s mouth quirked upward in what might have been the ghost of a grin. “Next time I promise I’ll dye my mustache white before I grumble about getting old. Are you happy now?” 

“Words can’t describe how jubilant.” Mario chuckled, and then continued in a much more serious manner, “Sid, no second is wasted time as long as you pour your heart and soul into it. If you and your teammates don’t panic and lose control, you have a very good chance of beating the Rangers.” 

“What if we don’t win?” Swallowing hard, Sidney seemed to choke on this dreadful question. “What if we fail again?” 

“Stop doubting yourself.” Although he appreciated Sidney sharing with him every bit of bruised dream and battered pride—especially since he had, after all, practically commanded Sidney to do so, which meant he could hardly grouse about the confidences he was given—Mario wanted to restore Sidney’s faith in himself and remind him of the winner that Mario saw whenever he looked at Sidney. “The first step to winning is believing in yourself and your teammates. Even if you don’t win, the important thing is to leave nobody doubting that you did your best. Just work your tail off and keep a leash on that notorious temper of yours next game, and you’ll be my champion no matter what.”


End file.
